One of J’s favorite dim sum items is char siu bao – baked or steamed, he loves both the same. Only the other day, we were in Uwajimaya and he felt hungry for something warm. He opted for steamed BBQ pork buns. He offered me a bite, but I refused – the dough looked rubbery, the interior was scarily red, and the meat was non-existent. Ugh!

I’ve only ever made baked char siu bao once. It was not that they weren’t super-tasty, they were. They just took a lot of effort to make. However, one evening whilst surfing for food porn, I stumbled across Christine’s recipes. She has numerous recipes that involve making fluffy white Asian bread using the tangzhong (water roux) method. This method involves making a thick paste by heating one part of bread flour to five parts of water and incorporating it into the bread dough. It is the base of many Asian white breads that stays soft for days.

I’ve never made bread this way – so I decide to try it. The results are fantastic – the bread is soft, fluffy and slightly chewy. It will be the base of many Chinese-style baked bread items that I can now introduce to our stomachs… I’m particularly looking forward to buns filled with coconut, red bean paste, curried beef, ham and spring onions (scallions) and more.

The buns do take a little while to make from start to finish, and I spread it over the course of two days. The tangzhong (water roux) is allowed to chill for a couple of hours, whilst I make the filling. Both the bread/bao dough and filling are then left to chill overnight. In the morning, I simply form the bao and prove for 1 hour before baking them.

These Chinese BBQ pork buns can be made with chicken. I tried it with chicken char siu… I know it sounds like an abomination, but the results were fantastic – it’s a great alternative if you don’t eat pork. The flavor and texture is just as good. I used whole, skinless, boneless chicken thighs and followed my recipe for char siu (Chinese roast pork). To make things EVEN easier, after marinating the chicken thighs, I pan-fried them in a non-stick pan (with no oil) until cooked through, then proceeded with this recipe.

5. Heat groundnut (peanut) oil in a frying pan until hot, and then sauté shallots until translucent, about 3-5 minutes. Add the char siu and sauce mix, stir constantly until thickened and then transfer to a bowl. Let cool, then cover and chill until cold, preferably overnight.

6. To make the bread/bao dough, stir yeast and milk together in the bowl of a stand mixer. Let stand for 5-10 minutes or until frothy.

7. Add the remaining ingredients, and using the dough hook attachment, mix the dough until it comes together, about 5 minutes. Continue to knead on medium-low speed for a further 10-15 minutes, or until the dough is elastic. To check that the gluten has developed well enough, take a small portion of dough and stretch it slowly between your fingers. If it stretches easily to a thin membrane and you can see light through it when held up (the window-pane test), then it’s ready.

8. Lightly oil the dough ball, then place back into the stand mixer bowl. Cover with cling film (plastic wrap) and place in the refrigerator for an overnight prove. Alternatively, let the dough prove in a warm spot for about 1 hour, or until double in size.

9. The following day, take the dough out from the fridge and allow to sit for 30 minutes (omit this step if you’ve done a warm prove). Punch down the dough and roll into a long sausage shape. Cut into 16 equal size pieces (mine were 46 g (1.6 oz) each).

10. Roll each dough ball into a circle (round) just over 10 cm (4 inches) in diameter, making the edges thinner than the center.

11. Place 1 heaped tablespoon of the filling into the center of each dough circle (round).

12. Carefully pinch up the edges and press together, ensuring the filling is well sealed.

Hi Christine, If you’re going to freeze them, my suggestion would be to thaw in the refrigerator and then let sit at room temperature whilst preheating the oven, and then throw them in. Although I’ve not tried this. Let me know how they turn out🙂.

I finally tried freezing the buns. While they tasted okay, they didn’t look as nice… the thawing step created some cracks in the outer surface – just didn’t look as pretty as the fresh ones. Can’t beat them fresh!

Hi Christine, thanks for telling me about your “freezing” experiment. It’s a shame that they weren’t as good as fresh. You’re right, you can’t beat them fresh, but I guess this is true with most foods.

does the dough need to be made using a mixer? As I have no mixer so tried to make the dough using my hands using the measurements here and it turned out very wet and soggy, so in the end I ended up putting 750g of flour into the mixture, and when the dough came out of the oven it wasn’t soft like in your picture but rather hard😦

Hello Samantha, I’m sorry that your buns didn’t turn out as expected. To answer your question, no, the dough doesn’t need to be kneaded in a mixer, but I think it helps. Why? Mainly because the mixture is pretty messy at the beginning, and because it’s so icky on your hands, most people give into the temptation of adding more flour. The dough needs to be worked at really hard to develop the gluten, which turns the wet and soggy dough into a smooth and elastic one. Adding more flour does nothing to the gluten development, but will dry out the resulting product. Did the dough reach the ‘window-pane’ test? PS: the time noted for kneading is only for machines, if you are kneading by hand, I’m pretty sure you’d need to knead a lot longer.

Hello Erica, Thank you for spotting that. I’ve been meaning to change all the t to teaspoons and T to tablespoons, but obviously I missed a few in this recipe. The recipe has now been changed. Yeast is 1 1/2 teaspoons and soy sauce is 1 1/2 teaspoons too.

Hi Jenny, I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t work. The tangzhong is only made from flour and water, and I can’t think of anything that could happen to it whilst chilling, except turning if left too long. Try it out, and let me know how it goes. Good luck!

Hi Hungry, The roux should be added to make the dough in step 7. In the ingredients for the bread dough, you will see “all of the tangzhong (water roux)” listed as the 8th ingredient. I’m sorry if this caused any ambiguity. Thanks for visiting and good luck with the recipe.

(i) I have never put the filled buns into the fridge for a second cold proof, so I’m not sure how they’d turn out. I wouldn’t recommend it, but who knows? You might create wonderful buns that way. The reasons why I’m concerned is that you don’t know how big the buns will get whilst you’re not watching them, also, it’s harder to cover them without them getting over-dry in the fridge (creating a horrid hard crust).

(ii) For the first cold prove, I have left the dough in the fridge for 24 hours with no problem. I hope this helps, and good luck!

Our local Chinese bakery makes their baos like this. I have been looking for the dough recipe and came across the Tong Zhong starter on YouTube and did some research and I believe is what the bakery uses, soft, airy and sweet milk like consistency. I plan to make this but I am having a difficult time locating the Dry Milk Powder. I am tempted to buy the dry baby formula at our market… Do we have to special order this?

Hi Jean, yes this is definitely the type of starter you need to make Chinese baked buns.

Re: dry milk powder, if you only need 1 tablespoon, like in my recipe, I would be tempted to skip it, or add a bit more butter. The milk powder supposedly makes the bread softer, more tender and a little richer, but I’ve made bread millions of times without the milk powder and it’s been wonderful. I would advise against the dry baby formula, that’s just a little weird… but that’s just me🙂.

Every time I venture out to our market I make it a point of heading straight to the baking good items first but I cannot find the elusive milk powder. And I live in California *Bows my head in shame*. I’ll have to look harder next time.

Milk powder can be one of the trickier things to find in store, they are packaged in the weirdest ways sometimes. Being in California, I am almost certain they would stock milk powder in the grocery aisles. I’d recommend asking an assistant to help you next time, it’ll save you a lot of trouble. Good luck!

I am trying this Cha Siu Pao for the first time. Proofing the dough now, outside in this warm weather. I used my Kitchen Aid to mix the dough. Total of 25 mins and yet the dough is very sticky unlike other bread doughs I’ve done. Couldn’t even check it with window pane test as the dough was so sticky. (I’m quite certain I’ve got my measurements correct) Decided to go ahead to put it out to proof. Wasn’t sure if over kneading was going to help. Is this situation common?….the dough being so sticky? Thanks.

Hi Yoke, Sorry about your sticky dough. It is unclear which method of measuring you used. I understand that if it was the volume method, there could be errors that way because everyone weighs cups differently. I create all my recipes using weights. Many recipes make the conversion that 1 cup flour is 125 g. However, when I measure 1 cup flour, it is 150 g. That’s a difference that is 25 g, which is just over 2 tablespoons. Since this recipe calls for 350 g (2 ⅓ c) bread flour, if one was measuring 1 cup as being only 125 g, there would be an error of 58 g (almost 1/3 c). If the dough is sticky, please add a bit more flour. The dough should be elastic, not sticky, and you should be able to stretch to check the gluten development with the window pane test. I hope this reply gets to you in time…

Thanks so much for responding, Linda.
Yes I was very careful with measurements and had weighed each item that was in grams.
(I can only think of the 2 ‘culprits’…..my Tangzhong was cold from the fridge and milk that was mixed with yeast was also cold)
I went ahead after proofing, the dough did double enough but handling it was not easy. That’s when I had to dust with flour while filling up each piece with char siu. The next round of proofing also doubled up well but because dough was wet, I ended up with ‘flat-ish’ pau.
Later, I read up all the response that Christine got from readers and found out that many who used the stand mixer encountered this same problem.
I’m going to try again but will continue using the stand mixer, but at Speed 2 instead. I hope the dough would not have been over kneaded, as I have to reach the window pane stage.
What do you think?

Hi again, I am sorry to hear that you had flat-ish pau. I hope they still tasted good. I have never had a problem with over kneading the dough, nor have I had a problem with using cold milk. Could it be that the dough was over-proofed? I wish you luck in your next try.

Hi Linda, thanks again for your response. I’m happy to let you know I’ve done this again with success. I used my Kitchen Aid mixer, using room temperature tangzhong and room temperature milk, and put the mixer to work for about 40 mins at Speed 2.
I also tried this recipe in a borrowed bread maker, and yes, I was SOLD! That’s the way to go….let it do all the messy work! Kneading and proofing for me.
So now, I’m moving on to other fillings for this wonderful recipe for paus, using the tangzhong method.
Thank you so much for your help.

Yes, all purpose flour will work, but the gluten may not develop as well as in bread flour. If you can find vital wheat gluten, make your own bread flour by adding 1 tablespoon to 150 g (1 c) all purpose flour.

Hi Linda (I love the picture you choose),
I am anxious to use your Char Siu Bao recipe but could not find a “PRINT” button to click, so I used the ‘File – Print’ menu method and printed the entire 20 or so pages. The problem with that method is that because your background color is black I needed to turn off the print background option so that I would not use an entire black ink cartridge for each page. That left me with a new problem. Your text which is white is now ALMOST invisible on the page and I am unable to follow the recipe.

I realize that I have probably made some kind of dumb mistake, but I am starved for some Bao, so could you help set me straight.

Hi JazzBruce. I am sorry that you have been having trouble printing this recipe, you haven’t made a dumb mistake, it’s just the theme and the formatting. I will need to add the “print” function soon. In the meantime, I have found a go-around. If you have notepad and Word, it’ll work. Highlight just the recipe part, and copy into notepad. Then copy from notepad into Word. This will remove all the formatting and black background, allowing you to print “normally”. Hopefully this will work, and you can eat bao soon🙂.